


Five Times Alex and Cat Had an Honest Conversation

by Bluefall



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Background supercat, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 03:11:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9529229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluefall/pseuds/Bluefall
Summary: Sometimes getting along with the in-laws is hard. Then again, sometimes it's worth it.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Written during the hiatus. Established SuperCat and therefore vaguely AU, but assume things went pretty much the same as canon at least until 2x08, with the exception of Cat and Kara getting their shit together before Cat left (and Cat therefore at least not leaving town).
> 
> I discovered quickly while writing this that show timeline is an incoherent morass of plots and subplots that are routinely directly paralleled despite vast disparity in how long they should take, and also a lot of obvious missing time offscreen, so we're just going to declare the first seven episodes three or four months and call it a day.

It had been a long morning, and the markedly inferior Ms Tessmacher could not provide a hot cup of coffee to save her life (and if it weren't for Kara, she would probably have tested that by now); that was Cat's definitive reason for not noticing until she was halfway into her office that she wasn't alone. It was definitely not because Kara's sister was some kind of terrifying government ninja, and Cat was absolutely not intimidated by the stark, threatening stare being levelled at her from her own damn chair.

“Please, Agent Scully, come in. Make yourself comfortable,” said Cat dryly, settling into her standard posture of _your presence is distasteful but I am magnanimous enough to not have you immediately removed_. She'd become very good at it over the last year, thanks to Maxwell Lord.

Kara's sister – Alex, if she had earned the dignity of an actual name, which she hadn't – appeared as unruffled by Cat's annoyance as Cat herself was determined to be by Alex's presence. She just crossed her arms and said, unblinking and _very_ unfriendly, “What exactly is it that you think you're doing with my sister.” Her voice was so flat it wasn't even a question. Really more of a threat.

Cat sat casually down on her couch and set down her coffee, not letting go of her air of contempt. “Is this the shovel talk? I don't think I've ever had one of those. How exciting.”

“No.” Alex's lips were a thin line. “The shovel talk is ' _if_ you hurt Kara.' What this is is your one chance to convince me that you're somehow not doing that already with this exploitative little mid-life crisis of yours.”

“Or what, exactly?” she volleyed back, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Would Kara take particularly kindly to you bringing home my parts in a bag?”

Alex's gaze didn't flicker. “She's forgiven me worse.”

She _mean_ _t_ it, and almost every part of Cat flared up at the open threat, ready to go for blood, she leaned forward and curled her hands into unconscious fists before she could even think, because _no_ one talked to Cat Grant like this, not anymore, especially not some trumped-up jackboot spook from an off-the-books extralegal civil-rights-violating government acronym, Cat had faced down Livewire and angry Kryptonians without flinching and it went against everything she _was_ to do anything but spit in the face of this kind of violent thuggery –

– but only _almost_. There was still one small corner of her mind that wavered, a small corner that had been telling her for more than a year that Alex was absolutely right and starting a relationship with Kara was manipulative, almost criminal; a small corner that _knew Kara_ and that her heart was as soft as her body was invulnerable and that no amount of Cat's pride was worth trying to hurt the person who sat at the center of it, no matter how much said person might deserve it.

And ultimately, somehow, through some miracle, that part won.

Cat took a deep breath and let it out, counted to ten, painfully uncurled her fists, and looked Alex in the eyes.

“Don't think I don't know what this looks like, Agent,” and okay, now even the angry parts of her weren't fighting back anymore, because for just a second Alex looked _shocked_ by that response, thrown by not getting the fight she expected. And putting her off her game like that, for even the brief instant before she could school herself, was just as good as any victory Cat could have gotten in an open conflict.

And the agent's face, once she collected herself, was fractionally less hostile as well; it made it easier for Cat to go on, to admit, “It's not as though I didn't have plenty of my own reservations about acting exactly like every other rich, entitled, corporate asshole man I got into this business to expose. Call it a mid-life crisis, exploitation, sexual harassment, whatever you like, I assure you I've dismissed it as worse. I spent a long time doing everything I could think of to keep myself from even considering... what I deemed _indulging_ myself at Kara's expense.”

Cat could feel the self-depreciating twist of her mouth, an unfamiliar and uncomfortable expression, and she pushed it away aggressively, along with the emotion that provoked it. “It appears, however, that I have become incapable of denying your sister anything that she wants, and as long as what she wants is me, I will oblige.”

“You're seriously blaming _Kara_ for _your_ inability to keep it in your pants around a pretty assistant.”

“I'm an adult and I take responsibility for my own actions. You might consider allowing Kara responsibility for hers. Perhaps you've forgotten that she could crush me with her pinky finger if she wanted to?”

“Are you trying to convince me that makes this supposed 'relationship' _more_ equal? When you want something from her that she doesn't want to give, what am I supposed to think will stop you from threatening to expose her? _Again_?”

The pointed reminder stung a little. “Apart from my own sense of honor, which you have no reason to believe I have?”

Wonder of wonders, that wry admission actually seemed to have earned her an iota of approval from Alex, if the slight hint of a smirk at the corner of her mouth was any indication. “Apart from that, yes.”

“Supergirl has powerful enemies,” Cat said levelly. “If they knew her identity, Kara Danvers would share those enemies, and Kara Danvers has an easily-discovered habit of picking my son up from his school. Under no circumstances will I _ever_ allow his safety to be compromised in that manner,” she felt her own glare rising to a level every bit as dangerous as Alex's initially had been, “and if you trust nothing else about me, Agent, you may rest assured of that.”

Alex didn't reply for a moment, and they watched each other, unblinking, for what felt like a very long time.

Finally Alex stood.

“If I ever think for even a _second_ ,” she said, “that you have hurt, or exploited, or been anything less than 100% above-board _perfect_ to my sister, they will _never_. Find your body.”

With that, she walked out. And Cat believed her.


	2. Two

Alex had showed up at Kara's door fully prepared to have a miserable evening. Kara apparently had found some article on the internet somewhere about making intergenerational relationships work, and how it's very important to spend time with each other's friends, and somehow this had translated into Cat Grant at Game Night like her thousand-dollar shoes and petty judgements actually _belong_ _ed_ there, and Kara making Alex promise to be _nice_.

(Did Cat Grant ever promise to be _nice_? Because the way she'd called Kara the wrong name for two years and criticized her to tears on at least four separate occasions suggested that she had not, but Alex and Kara had had that conversation enough times that Alex had mostly given up.)

Rather to her surprise, though, it hadn't been that bad a night. Winn was profoundly uncomfortable at the start, but Lucy and James got over their awkwardness quickly enough to keep the conversation moving, and Mon-El didn't have any awkwardness to overcome. And Maggie actually turned out to get along with Cat quite well, the two bonding over a vast shared knowledge of queer culture (which was frankly not helping Alex to like Cat at all). This, in turn, relaxed Winn quite a bit and gave him something to add, because apparently Winn was bisexual, which apparently he never thought to mention because somehow he thought everyone already knew. This was information that would have been extremely useful to Alex, say, a few weeks prior when she was _losing her shit_ , but she restrained herself to only smacking him upside the head once, because Kara's insistence on being _nice_ probably extended to Winn as well.

(And that was a really improbable number of queer people to accidentally end up in the same social circle without even knowing, in her opinion, but Maggie and Cat and Winn all assured her that it actually happens a lot.)

Beyond that, in deference to the “Kara and Alex are forbidden to be on the same Charades team ever again” rule, Kara had matched up with Cat, and they'd been soundly trounced by Lucy and James. The rather uncharitable satisfaction this gave Alex was enough to make her not even care that she and Maggie came in dead last, behind the alien who'd been on Earth for _three months_ , even in the face of Lucy's smug victory dance. Maggie didn't seem bothered either; she was warm and vibrating with humor against Alex's side on the couch, smiling fond and private smiles in Alex's direction whenever she said something clever, and Kara had been free and bright and bubbling over with laughter all evening, and no, it hadn't been that bad a night _at all_.

Maybe that was why she didn't realize, when she ducked out from under Maggie's arm to go grab one of Kara's sweatshirts, that Cat hadn't come back from the bathroom yet. Maybe that's why she was completely unprepared to almost crash into the woman in the hall.

“Alex,” acknowledged Cat, in a way that made Alex think she wanted to call her Agent Scully again. (Cat didn't seem to realize that it wasn't an insult to a woman who'd chosen her career half for her sister's sake and half out of straight up childhood hero worship for the character in question.)

“Cat,” drawled Alex in turn (despite very much wanting to see what would happen if she called her Catherine), and started to move past her.

Cat halted her movement with a curious tilt of her head. “I'm glad to see you worked things out with your detective,” she said, apropos of nothing, and for just a second Alex was thrown.

“I... what? Oh, Maggie?” Her mood darkened – it was probably meant to be an olive branch, but it was already hard enough to let her sister see that kind of pain. To think that _Cat_ had even second-hand access was appalling. “Kara has a big mouth.”

“Kara cares about you,” corrected Cat mildly, “and hates feeling like she doesn't know how to help.” Then, with a slight smirk, she added, “And she has a big mouth.”

The unexpected tease was almost disarming by itself, but what got through to Alex was the reprimand; Cat got at least one point back for the seemingly automatic defense of Kara, and Alex took a breath to unruffle her feathers a bit and allow the hint of a smile. “She really does. But you can tell her the same thing I did, she doesn't need to worry. Maggie and I are friends, and it's fine.”

“Friends?” repeated Cat, one eyebrow cocked, and she genuinely seemed surprised. Apparently that wasn't what she had meant by 'working things out.' “Really.”

“Really,” drawled Alex. “She was very clear on that point.”

Cat gave her a measuring look, let that smirk creep across her face again, and said, “I guess that MS on her keychain stands for 'mixed signals,' then,” and it actually startled Alex into a snort of astonished laughter. It felt disloyal, but honestly, it was a shocking relief, the idea that someone with no reason to lie had read Maggie's behavior the same way she had, that she hadn't been a complete fool for thinking she'd had a chance.

But that wasn't something she was about to admit to _Cat fucking Grant_ , so she shook her head and turned back toward Kara's bedroom, leaving the conversation behind her with a backwards wave. “Nice chatting with you, Cat.”

“Always a pleasure,” was Cat's dry answer as she headed back toward the party, and this time Alex didn't bother to stop the amused quirk of her mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I mentioned, the timeline is fuzzy, but given how much time Alex and Maggie obviously spent together offscreen between Roulette and Alex's Big Gay Realization, I think it's fair to spot them a couple game nights between "I desperately need you in my life (but totally just as a friend, though)" and "kiss the girls we want to kiss." Or just assume that Kara being openly queer at this point accelerated Alex's coming out. Whatever works for you.


	3. Three

Carter bounced down the stairs, backpack slung over one shoulder, just as Cat finished opening the door for Alex, and it prompted a broad smile from the younger woman.

“Hey kid, you ready to go impress some PhDs with your mad chemistry skills?”

“Nobody says 'mad skills' anymore, Alex,” Carter admonished, eyes down but grinning.

“ _I_ do. Are you saying I'm nobody?”

“Nobody cool, at least.”

Cat interrupted their teasing with a fond but scolding “Carter,” before turning to Alex and putting on her most polite smile with only minimal effort. “Thank you again for doing this for him. I've been trying to get him to the front of the Space Camp wait list since he was ten years old.”

“It's not _Space Camp_ , Mom, it's the SoCal Aeronautics Summer Curriculum,” grumbled Carter. “And I still have to get through the interview.”

“It's basically a formality,” Alex said, waving off his concern. "The board was really impressed by your project submission." She apparently noticed that Carter had withdrawn a little anyway, though, because before Cat could even think to say anything, Alex continued, seamless, “If you're worried about it, though, stare at Dr. Chavez's nose.”

That startled Carter into looking up. “His nose?”

“Yep,” confirmed Alex. “Unless you're basically breathing in someone's face, there isn't enough difference between the bridge of someone's nose and their eyes to notice. If that's too uncomfortable, try the middle of his forehead, it still shouldn't be enough of an angle to matter from a few feet away.”

Carter narrowed his eyes, presumably looking at Alex's nose, then turned to Cat, presumably looking at hers. If he was, Alex was right; Cat couldn't see a difference.

He broke into a grin, and said “Thanks, Alex,” dropping his eyes back down to knee level.

With that demonstration apparently over, Cat turned to pull Carter's coat out of the front closet to hand it over and send him on his way – only to discover it missing, prompting an exasperated “ _Carter_ , how many times do I have to tell you to hang up your coat when you walk in the door?”

“Sorry Mom!” he said, already darting off. “I'll find it, just a minute.”

Alex leaned against the doorjamb to wait, and Cat regarded her curiously. Apparently, Alex could read the question in her face, and was feeling generous, because she offered a simple, “Kara.”

“Kara's not autistic,” said Cat.

“Wow, nothing gets by you,” said Alex with one smug eyebrow lifted. “You ever consider a career in journalism?”

Cat just rolled her eyes, and for a moment they stood there silently in a fit of prickly tension, listening to Carter crashing around upstairs looking for his jacket. But eventually Alex relented, easing off on her animosity with a barely audible sigh.

“When she first came to live with us,” she elaborated, a little grudgingly, “Kara had a lot of random stuff going on between the trauma of Krypton and suddenly having a bunch of overwhelming superpowers. Weird triggers, sensory overload shutdowns, that kind of thing.”

“She's told me a bit about that,” Cat admitted.

“Yeah. Well, she didn't like talking to my parents about... really anything, at first. I think it felt a bit like betraying her own parents, to her? To let another adult fill that role.” Alex, still slouched nonchalantly in the doorway, shrugged with her free shoulder. “And I didn't really know anything about trauma, but some of her behavior reminded me of stuff I'd heard about in biochem. So I read pretty much the university library's entire psychiatric section, and a bunch of autobiographies one of the librarians suggested, basically anything that looked like it might mention one of her symptoms or how to help. Even did a little email correspondence with some professors about their research. I guess I picked up some useful side information along the way.”

“.... You were _fourteen_ ,” objected Cat, incredulous. On some level it wasn't that surprising that Alex would have essentially managed a self-taught college degree as a teenager; Cat suspected there wasn't really any amount of effort that was too much for Alex when it came to her sister. But that a _child_ should have been that deeply responsible for another child's care made every maternal fiber in Cat's body cry out in angry revolt.

Alex, though, just corrected mildly, “Mostly fifteen by then. And I grew up reading my mom's textbooks, I was used to the style.”

As though she needed to explain how it was possible, rather than what possible justification there could be that she had found it necessary. Cat opened her mouth, closed it again, then opened it one more time to begin, “That's not exactly –”

But Carter cut her off by reappearing on the stairs, coat triumphantly in hand. “Sorry guys, I found it, I'm ready Alex,” came spilling out of him rapidfire as he tromped down to join them, then stopped up short and pulled his posture perfectly upright in front of his mother. “I'm ready, Mom.”

“I suppose you are,” said Cat proudly, dropping a kiss on his forehead and ushering him out the door, with a final warning to Alex to “drive safe,” that wasn't nearly as stern as it should have been.

Alex just nodded. “I'll have him back by five,” she said, as she followed on Carter's heels. “And no ice cream.”

Just as she always did with Kara, Cat felt quite confident that that was a complete and utter lie that actually meant “there will definitely be a stop for ice cream even though you explicitly forbade it.”

But strangely, just as it was with Kara, Cat found that she didn't entirely mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Secretly this fic is as much about Alex and Kara as it is Alex and Cat. Don't tell anyone.


	4. Four

“Do you think it's true?” Cat asked, breaking the sober silence of their walk away from the visitor's area. "Her story about where her powers came from?"

“What, her whole line cursed by an Irish mound fairy to become screaming murderers when wronged?” Alex scoffed. “Not particularly.”

Cat raised an eyebrow. “You don't believe in magic?”

“I don't believe a woman can reach the age of twenty-seven without ever being wronged.”

That earned her a snort of amused agreement.

“Best guess,” continued Alex, more seriously, “it's a mutation that goes active in response to psychological stress. It's a common and pretty straightforward biological mechanism, if maybe a little dramatic when it involves the metahuman gene.”

“So either way, I did this to her.”

She said it so matter-of-factly, and Alex peered at her in surprise. She knew Siobhan's story, of course, and Cat wasn't entirely wrong, but it was odd to hear the Queen of All Media accept blame at all, much less more blame than she actually deserved.

Which was maybe why she felt she needed to object. “You may have been an ass, but it was _her_ choice to react to that with attempted homicide. She had access to the DEO and the full support of a really decent guy who _still_ visits her at least once a month, she had plenty of opportunity to find a solution to her powers. But she jumped to revenge the second it was suggested. Healthy, not-evil people just leave bad reviews on RateMyBoss dot com.”

(In fact many, many healthy not-evil people had. Alex still remembered a few of the pithier ones from the long process of Exploring Kara's Job Prospects With A Heavy Focus On CatCo. There had been enough furious insults on rating websites from former subordinates of Cat's to keep a libel lawyer busy for years, but definitely no comments about screaming anyone to death.)

Cat didn't argue, but the way she silently stared down the barred prison corridor suggested she wasn't all that convinced.

“... is the collar really necessary?”

Again, Alex was surprised. “It was that or solitary confinement in a specially-designed soundproof room. She made the same call I would have, given the circumstances.”

“There wasn't another way? Something less.... dehumanizing?”

Alex furrowed her brow. “You're worried that a woman in _prison_ has to wear an ugly necklace.”

“Well don't even get me started on everything else wrong with this place, but one indignity at a time.”

“Look, I watch Orange is the New Black too, but prison reform is a little more complex than complaining about the couture to your local DEO agent. If you're really that concerned about the comfort of a woman who _tried to kill you_ , get Snapper to write an expose or something, I'm sure it would get a lot more traction.”

She said it as dryly as she'd ever said anything, but Cat actually made an interested, intentional sort of noise, like it was a serious concept, and said, “You know, I think I will.”

“For _Siobhan_ ,” Alex clarified, just to be sure.

“Among others.”

“Because you feel responsible for her?” ventured Alex.

“Because they're human beings with rights," said Cat, and it was actually an _admonishment_.

Alex blinked at her.

“You know,” said Alex slowly, “there are times when I really can't understand how you're the same person who deliberately called an actual walking ray of sunshine by the wrong name for two years straight out of sheer pettiness.”

Cat flinched, she actually goddamn _flinched_ , it was incredibly quick and subtle but it was there, just plain enough for a trained DEO agent who'd spent four months straight on microexpressions to catch.

“... many years ago,” said Cat softly, after a moment of silence that could only have been her schooling herself to stillness, “there was an ambitious cub reporter who wanted nothing more than to do a little good in the world. She was all full of lofty ideals – speaking truth to power, supporting fellow women, elevating the voices of the voiceless, every tragically delusional thing we in the business like to tell ourselves that we stand for, right before we discover that the only way to actually make a living is with shock porn and celebrity gossip.

“But these were the Reagan years, when cronyism made its first mortal blows to the middle class, the so-called 'war on drugs' was escalated into a blatantly racist attack on the black community, and men – _boys_ – were dying by the thousands in the street for loving the wrong people. And somehow, in the face of that comprehensive, ubiquitous _corruption_ , the whole nation seemed to be under the impression that everything was great. That the _president_ was great, one of the _greatest_ , and not a callous killer who left an entire generation to live on an unlivable minimum wage.”

(Alex wanted, so very very badly, to poke at that offhand admission of economic reality, which did not seem to mesh _at all_ with Cat's well-documented disdain for Millennials, but if she'd interrupted then Cat would never finish explaining, and thank Rao that all those years of keeping alien-related secrets had taught her verbal restraint. )

“And that,” said Cat, with the natural, casual emphasis of deeply-held conviction, “was when she realized that it's not about the truth. It's about who tells the story. And if she ever wanted to change the world – for the voiceless, for women, for anyone – she was going to have to be the one in charge of the narrative. The one with the loudest microphone and the largest network share. And so... after a short, young lifetime of trying to temper her ambition with kindness... of trying desperately to be anyone other than her mother...” She tossed a hand as though to dismiss the emotion hovering too close to the surface. “She just... stopped. She gave it full reign. She let it carry her to the top.”

Cat glanced at Alex with an eyeroll. “You know how it is, I'm sure, the military's even more of a boys' club than the media. You pay twice as many dues to rise half as high. You turn your back for a second and someone takes credit for your work. You cut someone a break and they take advantage. You do a perfect job, and someone two floors down screws up, and someone finds a way to make it your fault. You cannot rise without demanding the best, the  _very_ best, every minute, from everyone around you.”

“And so by the time you got there,” said Alex softly, “you'd made so many compromises that you'd lost track of the reason you'd wanted it in the first place.”

“... not entirely,” said Cat, her own voice going soft as well, the veneer of emotional distance she'd managed to maintain dropping away. “But close enough. I was never _good_ at kindness, not even as an idealistic undergrad. Cruelty was a much easier habit to settle into.”

“So what changed?”

Cat shrugged, a small, simple smile on her face. “What else?”

Alex nodded. “Kara.”

“Kara,” agreed Cat, with something like awe in her voice. “Brave and selfless and eager and so, so _good_. And I struck out looking for flaws, of course I did. I was old and bitter and didn't want to believe that anyone could be so uncompromisingly kind, so heroic, because what would that say about me? But she rose to my challenge, and challenged me right back. How could I keep telling myself that cruelty was the price of success, of making a difference, when there she was, shaking the whole world on its axis without a shred of malice or guile?”

She shrugged again, giving Alex another hapless half-smile. “I suppose there's something fitting about Cat Grant discovering her lost humanity out of sheer competitive spite.”

It was true, and all Alex could do was laugh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We don't know much about Cat’s politics, but I feel confident that any well-informed person who uses the word "privilege" hates Reagan.


	5. Five

It was perhaps inevitable that when they finally did find time for Cat to Meet Kara's Parents (well, mother, anyway), a Supergirl emergency would come up halfway through the meal. Based on the unspoken but clear consensus that it would be much too awkward for Cat to stay in her absence, she said her goodbyes to Eliza and Alex and followed Kara out to the driveway. 

“See, I told you Eliza would like you,” said Kara, lingering for a moment in her Supergirl outfit, her smile as sun-bright as ever.

“She took it better than I thought,” allowed Cat, and Kara laughed.

“I'll check in later tonight. Love you!”

“And you,” Cat agreed, reaching up for a quick kiss, and then Kara was streaking off into the sky. Cat watched her long enough to see the air ripple as she cracked the sound barrier with a thunderous boom, then turned to her car –

– and realized abruptly that she had left her purse in the house. She was, she decided (not for the first, or even fortieth time) much too dependent on Kara for that sort of thing. With a faintly sheepish sigh, she turned back toward the farmhouse.

The argument that had apparently broken out inside was audible before she even reached the porch. 

“– let this happen, Alex!? You're supposed to _protect_ your sister!”

“What, like I just sat back and cheered her on? You think I didn't _try_?”

“Obviously not hard enough!”

“I'm so sorry I can't stop a grown woman from dating whoever she pleases. We _talked_ about this, Mom! You even said it was a good thing that she came out as Supergirl!”

“That's different! That was her choice! Not some predatory older woman taking advantage of her kindness! You know how naive Kara can be, why would you just set her up to be hurt this way?”

At that, Cat walked far enough away to stop eavesdropping. Her initial impulse had actually been a kind of mild admiration for Eliza's remarkable poker face through dinner, but the insult to Kara had flipped her hard and fast to annoyance, and storming in to defend her partner would have done no one any good.

Instead, she wandered out to the swing chair hanging from a tall oak on the front lawn, just out of earshot, and tried to decide if she should wait out the fight or simply call for a car with the OnStar in the Bentley.

She was still weighing her options when Alex stormed out onto the porch, eyes red and watery. It took her exactly three seconds to notice Cat, and when she did, her face went hard and she spat out “Of fucking _course,_ ” following up immediately with a long chug from the beer in her hand.

Cat eyed the beer and tallied it up with the glasses of wine at dinner, and the way that Alex was standing stiff and still, eyes already drying under sheer force of will, with no hint of sway in her step and nothing in her expression but perfect focus. She thought about herself, Kara pouring her expertly into her car after long nights out, about how her otherwise utterly perfect assistant had routinely forgotten to have the scotch in her office refilled, about how seamlessly Kara still slipped tumblers of M&Ms into her hand before she even fully formed the thought that she'd like a drink.

She got off the swing, walked silently past Alex, and picked her purse up off the key table next to the umbrellas. The screen door banged behind her when she came back out, and she jumped a little; Alex and Kara must have known some trick to closing it quietly.

Alex hadn't moved.

Cat stepped up next to her and they both looked out at the fields in silent parallel, until Cat said,

“When I was younger, after my mother finished telling me what a terrible failure I was, I would sit and remind myself of all the things I had accomplished. That I was the reigning queen of a media empire, that I had celebrities and politicians and pundits on speed dial, that all the arrogant men who used to sneer at me in the newsroom worked for me now, unless I'd fired them.”

In her peripheral vision, Alex worked her jaw for a moment, like she was deciding whether to respond.

“And how did that work out for you?” she eventually said, flat and unimpressed.

“Terribly.”

That earned her a snort, though she wasn't sure if it was disgust or laughter. Cat dared a glance sideways, and Alex's expression didn't make it any clearer. It wasn't until she spoke that Cat could tell her cautious offering had been accepted; Alex's voice wasn't angry anymore, but there was a frailty to it, an attempt to project a calm and casual indifference over just a little too much bitterness and hurt to quite conceal.

“You know,” she said slowly, “I actually thought... We talked, after Kara came out as Supergirl, and I thought – that things were getting better, that. _We_ were getting better.”

Cat tried to sound offhand, rather than patronizing. “Maybe you are. Her daughter bringing home a woman her own age is a lot to take. It doesn't necessarily mean she's not learning to be more reasonable about smaller things.”

She could see Alex shaking her head, slowly, out of the corner of her eye.

“I'm not so sure. I'm thinking about it,” she bit the words off, almost fierce, swallowing down her emotion. “About that talk, last year, after Thanksgiving, I'm thinking about it. About what she said. About what she didn't say.”

Alex went quiet for a while, and Cat didn't push her. She knew enough to finish the thought, anyway. _I'll try to do better_ , or _I realize I was wrong._ Or even just _I'm sorry_. Once, long ago, when Cat had still believed that their relationship could be fixed and she and her mother had had endless half-arguments about how they treated each other, Katherine Grant had been a master of the sincere, emotional apology that you didn't notice until days later wasn't actually anything of the sort. It was, Cat had to admit, a useful skill in the boardroom, but she'd grown to find it pretty distasteful in her personal life.

Eventually Alex continued, a little more confident but still slow and hurt, “When I tried to tell her about... Maggie. About me. She didn't understand why I didn't want to... why it was so hard. To come out to her. Why I thought she would be disappointed in me. Like it was such a strange idea, that she might ever be less than 100% proud of anything I did. Or was. _Am_.” She punctuated with a swig of beer, and her voice was a little stronger, after. “It's like she doesn't even know that she does it. How –”

Another swig, and a moment of silence, and Alex finished, “How can she not even know that she's doing it? How am I supposed to – to ever be _enough_ when even the person judging me doesn't know where the bar is actually set?”

She still hadn't looked at Cat, and Cat was grateful for it. Comfort had never been her strength.

“It's interesting you should mention 'enough',” she finally offered quietly. “Because these days, when my mother makes me feel small, I remind myself that I am _enough_ for my son. That he is happy, and well-adjusted, that I haven't failed him the way my mother failed me, and that he wouldn't want anyone else for a mom. And I remind myself that I am enough for Kara. That whatever my flaws, my failings, that this amazing woman, who could have her pick of any number of more socially acceptable, more kind, more age-appropriate suitors somehow chooses to put her faith in _me_.”

She took a deep breath, not turning her head.

“While I wouldn't give up just yet if I were you... it is certainly possible that you will never be enough for your mother. And that will always hurt. But I can tell you this: You are _more_ than enough for Kara. You are the stable center of her universe, the first one she thinks of when she wants to share something and the first person she reaches for when she's afraid. You are always there for her when she needs you, and you have saved her over and over again. And if you and your mother are right about me, and I break her heart, you will be there to help her pick up the pieces, and that is all the protection anyone can ever really offer when it comes to the dangers of who we choose to love.”

Alex's hard swallow was audible, but Cat still didn't look away from the field.

“That doesn't bother you?” Alex said, once she'd mastered her voice again.

“What?”

“The idea that Kara puts someone else first.” She seemed skeptical, but Cat couldn't tell if it was at the idea of Kara prioritizing her or the idea of Cat not being bothered.

Cat, who had no doubt about either, simply shrugged. “I'm a mother.”

Alex took another long drink, and set the empty bottle along the railing with an unexpectedly gentle touch.

“.... she's not naive.”

It wasn't _entirely_ a non-sequitor, but Cat still didn't follow, and could only respond with a curious “Hm?”

“Kara. I don't know how much of that –” Alex gestured vaguely at the house behind her “– you heard, but Mom always thinks she's naive. Sometimes I even forget, a little. But she isn't. She knows how bad things can go. Better than most of us, actually. She just... she doesn't care. She'd rather take a chance on the good.”

“Lucky for us.”

“Yeah.” Alex finally turned, her eyes clear and her equilibrium obviously returned to her, and tilted her head ever so slightly away from the house. “See you around, Cat.”

Cat accepted the dismissal, and headed off to her car. But when she glanced in the rearview mirror on her way out of the driveway, she saw Alex raise her beer in a faint salute behind her, and the look on the woman's face was almost friendly.


End file.
